Thoughts on Eminem's Mariah Carey/Nick Cannon Dis track

It's called "The Warning" and you can get it here.

Eminem sounds engaged and energetic, which is nice, but the song is so...stupid. And (shocker) misogynistic and lazily homophobic (why even toss that throwaway "faggot" at Nick?) After the pile of dreck that was Relapse, my tolerance for Eminem's default sexism is really low. Why I found the misogyny on Relapse less defensible than that on earlier records is a post for another day, but suffice to say I thought the album almost completely sucked and one part of why it sucked so bad was the boring,bored-sounding, repetitive, and pandering sexism, so I'm not in a forgiving mood when faced with the patriarchal cliches that comprise "The Warning". Oh, Mariah's Obsessed video could be about you, boo fucking hoo, you're the one who stretched the currency of that relationship well past viability with that irritating, confusing (in a bad hangover kind of way) "Bagpipes" bullshit. It's been almost a decade, get over it. As my bf points out--go after rappers. Why are you going after singers? What's she gonna do, sing at you? It's no fun if there aren't dis tracks going back and forth. This beef looks like its more ready made for Perez Hilton than eagerly awaited mix tapes. but I digress.

Em comes off like a bratty little boy having a tantrum, but not at all cute. He's firing a warning, supposedly he has all this shit on Mariah that he'll let fly if she doesn't...what exactly? Stop making videos? The track itself is vicious yet largely devoid of content. Mostly he slams his ex in classically illogical patriarchal style for being (all together now) both a prude and a slut. Which is it, Em? Oh, you don't have to choose cuz this shit has nothing to do with reality, it just has to do with slamming women for being women. It's not even like Ally Sheedy said in The Breakfast Club [paraphrasing] "If you do, you're a slut, if you don't, you're a prude: it's a trap." It is a trap, but the rules aren't that clear. A woman can be a slut and a prude at the same time because some dude (or asshole of any gender) said she was, for reasons that have to do with the slurrer's anxiety rather than the actual behavior of the woman.

Apparently discussing a woman's sexual experience is inherently damning, even if there's nothing that really reflects badly on her in the discussion. Em claims that he once got a little over-excited and prematurely ejaculated on Mariah's stomach, grossing her out. Yeah, I didn't need to know that either, but "If I'm embarrassing me/I'm embarrassing you" Em claims after sharing. Really? Is that how it works, now?

Em spends the rest of the track flashing his late pass on Mariah's alleged alcoholism, superfluously reminding listeners that back in the earlier aughts she had a public meltdown, threatening to publicize some "pictures" (yawn), and finally, using some very un-scandalous clips from old voicemail messages that are way past their expiration date.

Earlier today Jay Smooth tweeted that, in his opinion, the track was a self-Ethering. I think that assessment is apt on a number of levels, and hope it's widely shared.